The Problem of Sakura
by m.peridot
Summary: Inspired by Neil Gaiman's "The Problem of Susan." In a world where Sakura chooses to desert, she reflects upon her choices and the reasons that she left. Warning: drastically AU.
1. the problem of sakura

Inspired by Neil Gaiman's "The Problem of Susan."

If you haven't read the aforementioned story, you might be a bit confused, so I do suggest you skim it. However I understand that that type of surrealist horror is not for everyone. You might find it weird and disturbing (actually, if you _don't_ find it weird and disturbing, I fear for your mental state), and it's not necessary to read this fic, so… ultimately, it's up to you, dear reader.

I do hope you enjoy.

*I*I*

She has the dream again that night.

In the dream, she is standing, with her teammates, on the edge of the battlefield. It is summer, and the forest is a peculiarly vivid shade of green: a wholesome green, as if brought into existence by the Mokuton mere seconds before. There are bodies on the undergrowth. None of the bodies are shinobi; it had been one of the inane eradication missions – they are still genin and must become used to blooding their hands on easy targets. She can see a bandit, his throat slit, on the ground near her. His skin is nut-brown from sun and grimy with the dust and dirt from the road. She finds herself staring at the open mouth and then the lips, oddly red and full, wondering about the days spent in ambush and the hit and runs, imagines being kissed by that bearded face, hands slipping down, caressing skin. Her eyes flick to the cut throat, and the sticky red-black pool that surrounds it, and she shivers.

Flies buzz around the corpses.

The flowers tangle in the growth; she can tell the lethal ones from the others. Some are crushed underfoot, the stalks broken and oozing the sticky, pearl droplets. They had remained undisturbed for, how long? A week? A month? A year? She does not know.

All this was still, she thinks, as she looks at the battlefield. Yesterday, all this was without human presence. Her whiskered teammate tugs her hand and points. Near the edge of the clearing, Kakashi saws off the head of the leader. He is apathetic, as he always, always is, visible eye half-lidded. The fine mist of blood does not disturb him, and she knows that in the morning, he will look as impeccable as ever. None of today will remain: erased as the lives of the petty criminals. The genin, however, cannot stay unaffected. Sasuke is even quieter, his eyes tighten momentarily. Naruto's plastic smile is back, and the dissonance between his beaming face and the carnage of the messy, inexperienced kills is jarring.

In her dream she notices these things.

Their sensei will finish his task soon, will seal the grotesque head…. There are things about herself that Sakura despises. Her hair, for example. The pink strands are brittle and rough, never silky-soft like the other kunoichi who choose to keep their hair long, and for this she cannot forgive herself, so on waking, she showers, using chakra to heat the water and, naked and towel-dried, runs a few products, all scentless to minimize the risk, through her hair. It is, she believes, her sole extravagance.

Today she straps on all her gear: the kunai and shuriken that she has so recently bought, the poison-tipped senbon hidden in her gloves and in her hair, the explosive tags in an easily accessible pouch. She thinks of this outfit as her serious outfit, as opposed to the naïvety of her youth or the civilian clothes she wears when she wants to disappear. Now that she is past the median age of shinobi survival (most die too young, their world's harsh reality consuming the lives as Naruto inhaled ramen), she wears the civilian clothes more and more. She puts on her pack.

After breakfast, she shunshins to the hunter's outpost. She discovers that a fairly arrogant, probably new, nin is there, waving and gesturing as he speaks loudly, obnoxiously, a head and a amputated hand on the countertop next to him. The crimson liquid pools and stains the wood. It looks like the dead bounty is drowning, as though most of his non-existant body is submerged in wood, the way Yamato used to phase through wood. She purses her lips and takes out a body scroll, deftly unrolling it and sealing the whole mess. The woman manning the station nods tersely at her and stares disapprovingly at the new nin. When he moves to protest her actions, Sakura flicks a kunai at him. He doesn't even have time to move, and it pins him to the wall through his shirt and cuts off a few strands of hair that then drift lazily to the ground. He gulps and shuts up. She turns back to the woman behind the counter, who hands her a small black book. She walks out and once up in a tree several miles away, pulls it out and flips to the captured and killed section at the end of the book.

She does not actually expect to encounter anyone she knows there, but the world is small, and she observes that, perhaps with cruel humour, they have run a photograph of Akamine Rei from before he defected, and not at all as he was the last time Sakura had last seen him, in a bar at the edge of the Land of Rivers, scarred from countless fights and a grim, forbidding countenance. He had been awaiting death, it was in his hands as they threw back drink after drink, and Sakura can no longer feel the slightest loss, only the terrible emptiness – he, after all, got what he wanted. In the photograph, he is very young. He looks too cocky by half, still devoured by that fanatical spirit of devotion. He was the one who had introduced her to Xi, her first and only partner after her departure. They had worked well together. He had asked her to stay, and she is no longer certain why she said no, or even if she had entirely said no. He was a pleasant-enough young man, jaded and shrewd with the thin veneer of politeness, beautiful in action – a work of art. She remembers his fingertips; the fire they traced on the back of her neck, and maybe that was why she left – too much vivacity… she senses approaching shinobi and slips off to meet them. Sakura has been aching for a fight (like an addict desperate for a fix), and they seem strong enough to pose somewhat of a threat.

Her first thought is how young the girl looks.

Her first thought is how old the woman looks. In the corner of her eye she sees taicho, a gaping wound in between his third and fourth rib, and she _knows_ that it's fatal, and she _knows_ that the others in her squad are much the same, but that realization is distant in the face of the woman on top of her – the lurid pink hair and a seal on her forehead, the immense strength… She is only a rookie, barely accepted into ANBU and yet, here she is, at her first meeting with an S-class nukenin. And not just any nukenin, but Haruno Sakura; Fleeting Life they call her, and she can only think of cherry blossoms.

Suddenly, she feels an urge to introduce herself to her killer. "Haruno Sakura-san? I'm Hayashi Ari."

The nukenin just looks at her, and she feels like a fool, unbalanced and deeply disturbed at herself. She decides, with finality, that she is in shock (or finally broken), and by the time she is no longer in shock, she will be dead.

So she continues.

"You know, your story used to make me so angry."

"What did?"

"Your deflection. Your teammates returned, your sensei stayed, your friends remained loyal to the Leaf, but you? You as a kunoichi, no, _the_ kunoichi of the vaunted Team Seven, _you left_. You were weak, and to some extent that affected me too. Whenever I fell behind or was excluded, it was to the assumption that kunoichi were weak."

She is rambling now, ranting about a trivial thing that she doesn't truly care about, but this is her deathbed, and _kami_ , it feels good to vent. She would leave the subject, but the pink haired woman quirks an eyebrow, and that is all the encouragement she needs.

"Hokage-sama believes that his teammate still has time, that even though you betrayed the village, as long as you live, you still have time to repent."

"Repent what?" The voice was soft, pointed as the senbon poised over her throat.

"Not believing in him, I suppose, not believing in his dream."

The older woman simply hums, sounding a bit bored.

"There must be something else wrong with you, something that Hokage-sama, that I can't quite grasp. Otherwise you wouldn't have damned yourself like that, leaving the village and all that it stands for. I mean, all your precious people are still in Konoha; only you are excluded by choice."

Or maybe, she thinks with a giggle, she's been poisoned. It would explain her lack of filter, the breakdown of the ANBU training and her emotionless mask.

"I don't know what you want to believe, but remaining behind would also have meant shackles and a leash as the Hokage's arm. How many of _his_ dreams have been actualized? But I digress…"

She sighs, breath warm on Ari's cheeks, and Ari shivers.

"I suppose you've never had to assign missions."

It was a statement, not a question, but Ari still replied with a negative.

"That's a blessing. I had my first failure at fourteen – Tsunade-shishou was drunk and Shizune-san was at the hospital leading reforms, so it fell to me as the Hokage's assistant. That whole week I was terrified, tense, what if I'd made a mistake, what if I was _wrong_ , a miscalculation. I was right. I had erred, and when his relatives came up to the mission room and spat in my face, I wondered what gave a village the power to dictate the lives of its shinobi through a sheaf of papers. Then it happened to me, and I obeyed, and obeyed, and obeyed, and it didn't seem to end, did it?"

Sakura trails off. She hadn't meant to say so much, and she has a chagrined look on her face as she realizes the airborne poison has affected her however slightly. The body underneath her grows limp, the heart no longer incessantly pulling against the tug of death, and all is silent again.

That night, Sakura climbs up the side of a tree, slowly, painstakingly, limbs aching from the brutal workout she has made herself do after the encounter with Hayashi Ari. she sets traps, because no matter how tired she is, safety will always be a the forefront of her mind, and slips into her sleeping bag, taking off only half of her gear and laying it to the side.

She takes a waterproof bag from her pack and, lying in the trees, not quite comfortable, but willing herself to bear it, she looks at the photographs, chakra enhancing the sliver of moonlight that reaches through the leaves. She looks at the sun and the stars and wonders how they could ever have been that young, how anybody could be that young.

The moonlight is cold, like snow, a white shivering that lightly touches the photos and Sakura inadvertently shudders, and the events of her childhood, of Konoha seem far too far away, overridden with a distance that she cannot cross. A shadow crosses the pictures and suddenly they seem menacing, the bright smiles and the stoic eyes turn odd and deranged, chaotic as her carefully tucked away emotions, because as much as she left Konoha, she has never left them.

Sakura falls into slumber and dreams anew.

In the dream, Kakashi is crossing the corpse-ridden clearing toward her team, slouch in place and uncaring of them and of himself. She is standing on the battlefield, holding her teammate's hand. She looks up at her scarecrow sensei, sees both his visible abyss and the red demonic eye, which if uncovered mean hell, and whispers to Naruto, in a flash of comprehension, " _He's a_ shinobi _, isn't he"_ and they shiver.

But as she comprehends, Kakashi, with the same carelessness and easy arrogance as the new hunter at the outpost, slices off her head with a white chakra saber. She cannot run, she cannot move, for Kakashi was a shinobi, and always faster. The rest of her body disappears except for her head and her left hand which are left to stay barely above the crimson tide.

She wishes that he had destroyed her head; then she would not have had to look. Dead eyelids cannot be closed, and she stares, unflinching, at the twisted thing her boys have become. The Sannin Orochimaru slithers out from behind at tree and caresses Sasuke's cheek, opening his mouth so that it falls, unhinged and large enough to swallow the Avenger and all his ambitions whole.

Naruto runs to the Sandaime, calling " _Jiji"_ but grasps at mist; before he can mourn, blank masked agents smother him and Danzo comes, tapping his cane, which echoes as though they were in the Council chambers instead of the soft ground of the forest. He unwraps his arm and the demonic red swirls and swirls, and Naruto's chest cavity unfolds like a flower, flesh peeling back bit by bit, rivets of blood over glistening flesh and corrupted chakra burns even Sakura, dead as she is, still burns, skin scalded off. Her sun screams, a long drawn-out _wail_ of horror and loss, as it splits open and pours its golden innards out onto the vibrant grass.

The Fox awakes, and the malice is palpable. First it devours its host, running its tongue through its teeth after it finishes, and then it turns to Sakura, ambles over to the head on the grass, and devours it in its huge mouth, crunching her skull in its powerful jaws, and it is then, only then, that she wakes.

Her breath comes in erratic bursts and she receives no more sleep that night.


	2. lucidity

_lucidity_

* * *

It does not start during her genin tests, both Iruka-sensei's or Kakashi's, it does not start during the awful mission to Wave, though she is terrified, and it does not start during Orochimaru's attack in the Forest of Death. It is at twelve that she begins a slow sinking, and it starts right before Sasuke's preliminary match.

Because that was when she asked him to step down.

"Sasuke-kun… you should also withdraw." It is said in a low, desperate voice, because Sakura has just escaped a _Sannin_ , and Sasuke-kun cannot be allowed to lose control. Because it is the pragmatic choice, the _safe_ choice, and because Sakura loves the brooding Avenger with all that she knows is love.

"You've been strange since Orochimaru attacked you. Your mark still hurts – if you continue…"

And Sakura, perhaps more than anyone, knows Sasuke. She does her research – she is the scholar – and she reads the last Uchiha like a torn and tattered book, of which only the middle part is intact. He _hurts_. It is in his gait, his minute distractions, his left arm twitching as his shoulder sends him another wave of pain.

"I'm afraid." It comes out without voluntary control, a quavering voice, and so so soft. Barely above her heartbeat, but her boys know her – perhaps not as well as she knows them, because they were always more concerned with their rivalry – but they know her all the same. So they hear.

Sakura rushes the next words out.

This is stronger, this is Sakura trying desperately to hold onto her emotions to gain some sliver of the control spiraling out of her grasp: "You're in no condition to fight! I can see it – the pain that you've been hiding all this time."

This is anger to hide the fear.

Sasuke – when in the course of her outburst did she forget the honorific? – swings around to her, eyes dark and burning embers, fanned by her words. When he tells her to shut up –

She is not surprised.

(She knows him.)

The numbness starts in her heart, and this is the beginning.

"Whatever you say, I'm still going to tell Sensei – "

"Be quiet!"

And suddenly, she sees him. Before, it had been obscured by her fanaticism, by her obsession, but ironically, it is her worry for him, her _caring_ , that opens her eyes. Because she disagrees with him, she _wants him safe_ , but he would risk his life, desperate to prove his strength.

(Because she already knew.)

The moment of clarity stretches into a lifetime of stolen moments before it snaps.

She does not remember when she started to cry. The tears run – burning a brand over filthy skin and stinging the myriad of shallow cuts and half dressed wounds – and she no longer cares that she looks like a tired, dirty, weak child.

Sakura doesn't believe she will ever stop loving him – he is her teammate: they have shed blood together, both their own and others, and there is nothing that ties a red string tighter, constricting breath, than the sensation of protecting a heartbeat. Sakura doesn't believe she will ever stop loving him, but her obsession's burning is drowned in the rather uncomfortable truth that Sasuke is a suicidal, desperate boy who will willingly throw himself and _that man_ off a cliff for the sake of silencing the agonized screaming inside his head.

(Because she suddenly realizes how odd, how horrifying it is that Sasuke's life purpose is _murder_.)

(Sakura is a civilian. Was a civilian. Shinobi find the darkness comforting and the taste of blood an old friend, but Sakura has nightmares when she cannot see and cries when she bleeds.)

She watches him fight with dull eyes, watches him be spirited away by a seemingly flippant Kakashi, and she feels the numbness spread. Inner screams and yells, angry, frustrated, frightened – her split demands that she get up and _do something_ , but Sakura merely stares at the grey concrete and wonders what it means to love someone and give up on them.


	3. affirmation

_affirmation_

* * *

When her name is called, Sakura peers, apathetic, up at the screen to the words: _Haruno Sakura vs Yamanaka Ino_. Inner is truly panicking now; nothing she does is affecting Outer, and the main consciousness _won't move_.

Half a minute passes and Inner makes an executive decision to take over.

(Half a minute passes and the audience holds their breath.)

Sakura jumps down to face Ino.

"Right now, I have no intention of fighting over Sasuke-kun with you – "

Inner smirks, a desperate, crazed thing, as her illusion world shivers at the impact. She knows the truth that has made Outer comatose, knows but does not acknowledge it, because Sasuke-kun has become their concrete – a constant. Their feelings for him drowned out the fear and trembling, made them strong, and Inner doesn't know how to cope without a focus.

She needs this fight, she needs to prove to herself and Outer that they are good, that they are _adequate_ without him.

So she taunts.

But Ino is not a Yamanaka for nothing, Ino is not her _first friend_ for nothing. She sees the minute signs, the smile too wide, a barely there quiver – she sees her desperation – but they are still friends, so she simply grins, feral and eager, and declares an all out match.

The first punch takes Ino off guard, though she had acknowledged the match. Sakura has _trained_ since Wave, and even before it. For all her fixation on Sasuke, Sakura is a kunoichi. She gave up her diet when she realized that she couldn't stay awake after she came home (when her civilian mother, who had seen her collapse, hysterically asked if she was alright) and realized that she would kill herself if she ever advanced in rank. Self-preservation and desperation are not pretty motivators; they lead to the gasping unconsciousness of self-destruction through single-minded fear. But they are enough.

And she knows Ino is strong for their age; Sakura knows that she doesn't have any special abilities or clan secrets. But Ino does not know desperation yet, and that gives Sakura an edge.

Ino may be better at taijutsu, may be faster, stronger, more experienced, but Sakura fights with the intent to kill – Kakashi's test comes back to her, and she thinks she finally realizes what he meant. They match blows; Sakura's pinpoint chakra control allows her to keep up though she is flagging.

They trade blows and fall apart, Sakura taking this chance to catch her breath, even as Ino rants, incensed by her words. (Sakura knows her friend, knows that being pretty is not what she truly cares about, but this is a promotion match and she needs every advantage she can get – and if that is to use Ino's anger against her, she will.)

So when Ino snaps, she expects it. What she doesn't expect is the hair; that when she dodges the first shintenshin, it will coil around her ankles like vipers and that her mind will be broken into.

Sakura slumps.


	4. expectation

_expectation_

* * *

Ino expects to win the match when her ploy pays off and the shintenshin connects.

Most of the room expects her to win when the shintenshin connects.

But then there is silence.

*I*I*

 _What Ino expects is a dark landscape. She expects it to be as if Sakura is sleeping, as if they had simply switched bodies. She expects to be able to raise her hand and declare her forfeit._

 _Instead, she gets stuck half way._

 _The Yamanaka have an excess of Yin chakra – much like the Nara, but aimed towards a different end. It concentrates in a different section of their brain, the supramarginal gyrus. It controls empathy, and combined with enough Yin chakra can create the Yamanaka signature jutsus, allowing the user to connect with another's brain, alter or take control of it by becoming part of that mind._

 _The shintenshin specifically targets the conscious mind, or the self, and shuts it down. This allows the caster's transferred mind to command the body to actions that the original would never have considered, such as forfeiting. The original mind is merely sleeping; of the Yamanaka jutsu, it is the gentlest… that is for the majority of the population._

 _But Sakura – she has pitiful reserves, but that is because of her lack of Yang chakra, not Yin. For Sakura, her Yin chakra is concentrated in her cerebrum, and more specifically, the right frontal lobe, which controls the mind's sense of self._

 _(Sakura has always been_ too _self-aware.)_

 _Her mind is sensitive to change, to chakra,_ because _there are two entities housed there. Sakura feels the breach as a branding iron, an attempt to control her._

 _So when Ino's chakra breaches Sakura's mind, the right frontal lobe and the chakra from the primary self – Outer, who was_ already _in a semi-comatose state – redirects the foreign invader to the "mental workplace," a series of interconnected parts of the brain, a web of chakra that creates a imaginary landscape._

 _So they dream._

* * *

 **extra: an analysis on team seven (by sakura):**

Of Team Seven, Sakura has always been more of the textbook shinobi.

Sasuke is too full of emotion. His drive comes from his single-minded mental state – first revenge, then guilt and atonement. His fixation of power overrode all logic, leading him to make stupid, rookie mistakes, set on proving himself to the ghosts and _that man_. Even now, he is too invested in each mission – as if he has something to prove, and perhaps he does.

Naruto at least doesn't show his emotions on his sleeve. Odd as it may seem, Naruto hides his emotions extremely well – the demon-container and orphan's mask is so secure that even the Third believed he was a happy-go-lucky optimist. But they're wrong. Yes, Naruto is and will ever be a dreamer, an idealist. He craves acknowledgement from the village.

But Sakura has worked with him on higher ranked missions. (His first kill was bloody, unintended, at least five stab wounds, but his opponent just _wouldn't die._ Sakura saw the crystal sapphires soften, melt and shatter into a red wound – the shadows on his face deepened and his teeth grew fangs. Only for the eighth of a second; Naruto knew the dangers of the Fox, but that was enough. His eyes slid away from the deep scores along the ribs of the dead bandit, and he turned to her with glassy eyes. The next day the bright (plastic) smile was back.) Naruto is terrifying on the battlefield because he almost never loses composure. He stays cheerful till the bloody end. He lives solely in the present, but dreams of the future. The past is ignored, to his own detriment.

Naruto isn't a true shinobi though. To borrow Kakashi's words, Naruto is the most "surprising" ninja. Not only is he loud and attention grabbing – the antithesis of an assassin – but he also fights against anything that clashes with his ideals. This includes most of the shinobi world and lifestyle. Naruto believes in heroes, and in a clear-cut right and wrong. He exists in a certainty that draws people in, that makes them want to believe in him. (Sakura, however, hasn't had the luxury of certainty for a long time. Before she became genin, her certainty was Sasuke – but that broke during the Chunin Exams. Then it became her team – but that too was shattered as they followed their respective Sannin to set themselves on opposing paths. Sakura lost her certainty before she became Chunin. )

But Naruto's dreams border on delusional. She doesn't mean his proclaimed goal of Hokage; no, Sakura means the reasons behind his act. Naruto wants a world without injustice, without pain, without backstabbing. When Sasuke left, he trusted in the bond of teammates to bring the Avenger back – he trusted that somewhere in his obsessed heart, the traitor had some good left to him. He believes in humanity's better angels – Naruto lives in a paradox of a bloody, dark world and the overlayering vision of cleansing rain.

No, Sakura is left to be the _sane_ one. On the mission to Wave, when the Demon Brothers attack, her first thought had been " _the client has priority"_ and she had acted accordingly. Sasuke had rushed immediately to their opponents, intent on fighting them, but that wasn't the _purpose of the mission_.

Later, on the bridge, Kakashi would assign her to protect Tazuna – not just because she is the weakest, but because she is the only one who could be trusted not to desert him and go after their enemies.

She can't afford to have many morals – her profession either breaks them or destroys the shinobi – and so, to her, the mission has top priority. That isn't to say she blindly follows the rules – if one of her closest people were hurt… well, Sakura is selfish.

Selfishness, she supposes, is a good descriptor.

Sakura was never meant to last – she is named for the cherry blossoms, and they are most beautiful when they fall. She takes what fleeting happiness she can catch and allows it to slip out of her grasp when the breeze stirs. Ino had once told her that she was waiting for a bud to bloom, but she forgot that once a flower blooms it is never long till it withers.

It is unnatural for a flower to last longer than a few days.

Sakura was never meant to last – she is the civilian kunoichi on a team of powerhouses; nobody expected her to be noticed, but even the sakura has its time. But her time has ever been short.

So she left.


	5. mist

_mist_

* * *

 _So they dream._

It is mist that defines the uncertain.

A heavy intangible, it weighs a burden of an ocean and yet nothing at all, and Ino thinks that she will drown. The eddies swirl, and she wonders if they are above ground or in the depth of the sea. The mist parts sometimes and she thinks that she can see… shapes. But they are too thin, too tall to be human, if they _are_ there. The mist clings to her, an uncomfortable feeling of foreign chakra, and she instinctively knows that it is unnatural, that it does not _belong_.

She cannot see the ground when she looks down, and the feelings of vertigo increase and amplify. She is disoriented, and for a shinobi, that is terrifying.

As _wrong_ as the chakra feels, Ino feels the urge to follow it to its source. But the dread increases as she nears.

 _Eight choices_

Unsteady, as if the ground itself is moving, _breathing_. Ino's heart stutters; her lungs are slowly filling as she can only breathe in the foreign chakra. It is denser than air; her chest strains against the oppressive weight. She wonders if it will consume her, if eventually the intake of the wrong lifeforce could destroy her existence, create a paradox, a dissonance between the body and mind. She wonders if when a shinobi falls, their chakra is released, seeking life; if she has breathed in a dying energy, a _parasite_.

 _Liver_

She sways, her eyes snap down and the crimson stain spreads. There is no pain, only the weakening of the body as it loses strength with the liquid seeping out. Crimson to black and black to ashes; they trickle down her body, streaking a dead grey.

 _Lungs_

Inhale, slowly and slower, the exhale is a defeat. Air is a necessity, but the parasite poisons her supply, and she no longer knows if her body is her own. If another's blood keeps you standing, to whom do you belong?

 _Spine_

Ino stands straight-backed, but the pressure would see her bend. It curves along her spine, a snake, moving through the parasites and whispering.

 _Clavicle_

A ghost of a touch on her shoulders, the imprint of a hand bearing down on her. Responsibility and Ino's thoughts turn to the leaden atmosphere of the winter solstice, when the three clans meet and affirm their vows, when the spirits turn disquieted and uncomfortably close. She remembers the flames in the night, the roar of the silence and her father's voice as she was declared heir.

 _Neck_

Paranoia breathes down her back. There are invisible eyes and she can feel them; they fixate, starting at the top of her hair and slipping down. Drops of intent and fear slide down her ribs. Nerve endings startle to the softest breeze and the wind cuts, sharp enough to draw pain.

 _Brain_

The mist she breathes pervades her body, they repress movement and thought, and her sight turns hazy – has she moved? Has she progressed? Or did she only think… the feeling of vertigo never fades and Ino abruptly realizes that she is falling.

(It is a dream, and Ino does not realized what is wrong, how she has been trapped in non-existence. She does forgets the match, forgets why she is there, forgets that she is not in a real place. She forgets the intended result of the shintenshin.)

 _Kidneys_

Sweat stings as it is blinked away, tracing a glistening sketch: a mockery of sorrow. Chills pass over her body; stabbing pains in her head, and her vision is spotted. She feels the bile rising in the back of her throat and the weakness spreads.

 _Heart_

Stumbling beats catch themselves and steady, but not for long; they trip and there are sparrow's wings against her ribs.

 _Which one should I go after first?_

Only a moment and then the mist condenses, falls, puddles.

The air clears.

Sakura is lying on the blank white, eyes unseeing and a arm outstretched, reaching for something intangible with a half-hearted desperation. She is faded, washed out, and yet – there is something _too_ vivid about the image. Her head lolls to the side, and Ino shivers at the vacant gaze.

 _You don't belong here_

Ino turns and flees.

 _Leave._

The shintenshin breaks.

*I*I*

On the floor of the preliminaries, two sets of eyes snap open.


	6. autoimmune

_autoimmune_

* * *

 _It's over; the shintenshin connected._

The words leave Kakashi's mouth, but the silence below makes him uneasy. Ignoring Naruto's voice and the murmuring of the other genin, his single eye roams, observing, picking out details.

The two genin haven't moved – it is as if they are paralyzed.

"Shintenshin? So Sakura is…"

Absentmindedly, Kakashi replies. "Yes. Supposedly, Sakura's mind has been completely taken over by Ino. Her consciousness is inside Sakura."

Kakashi pauses before the next words leave his mouth.

He was going to predict that Ino would force Sakura's body to forfeit, but somehow, his instincts are telling him to wait.

It takes a minute for the audience to quiet; the whispers fading away to unease as not a sound leaves the two combatants.

It takes two minutes for the proctor to shift and look up at the audience.

It takes another minute of silence before Sakura's body starts convulsing.

Asuma starts forward before Kakashi's arm shoots out and stops him. He looks at the Copy-nin, at the spinning, spinning Sharingan and subsides. Gekko Hayate, upon noticing Kakashi's intervention, stops his own movements towards the writhing body.

"Sakura's mind. It's rejecting the foreign chakra." It is said under his breath, and the silver-haired nin frowns.

Asuma's eyes widen. They both know the dangers of forcibly ejecting assimilating chakra, and they both know that it is _rare_ , perhaps two incidents ever recorded, that the Yamanaka's jutsu was cancelled without even a semi-voluntary decision of the caster. Both times the caster and the victim had died within the day.

(Integrating chakra into another's body is a delicate process, and the Yamanaka send their chakra directly into the mind. For the mind to reject the outsider chakra means a struggle; like a compromised immune system, the victim's chakra will attack anything deemed hostile carelessly and brutally, turning against itself in the process. The mind, which is a horrifically delicate organ, is turned into a battleground, and the damage of the fight can, and in most cases _will_ , destroy vital living functions and the mind of the caster.)

There is nothing that they can do; the body and the spirit will have to fight on its own. Any application of another chakra presence will only exacerbate the problem.

(What they do not know or consider is that Sakura's mind is _two_. It is only half of her chakra that is fighting – while Outer deals with the intruder, Inner has been drawn back into the mind. The chakra reinforces the battlefield, and while there are still impacts from the blows, the protective covering ascertains that the damage is absorbed by Inner. And since Sakura is only _semi-_ unconscious, and since Ino's chakra is recognized and categorized in her mind as _friend_ , her chakra is more directed, prioritizing on pushing Ino's chakra and mind _out_. It doesn't change much, but it is enough. She leaves Ino's consciousness battered and whole instead of in shreds.)

Kakashi's eye widens as the chakra snaps back to Ino and Sakura stops spasming.

Green and blue snap open, and suddenly they are sprinting towards each other, identical snarls on their faces. Kakashi doubts anyone else notices, but both Sakura and Ino have true antagonism on their features – perhaps a residue from the battle inside their minds. The Sharingan whirls; both combatants' chakra reserves are running low, _dangerously low_.

If the girls had fought further, Hayate hadn't declared the double knockout, then both genin would have had to be hospitalized for chakra exhaustion.

This time, when Asuma moves to jump, Kakashi follows with a near imperceptible sigh. His uncute genin are becoming more work than he'd expected.

Asuma's voice is full of disbelief as he looks Ino over. "Looks like we don't need a medic – they should regain consciousness in thirty to fifty minutes."

Kakashi nods, his Sharingan inspecting both girls.

"That was… surprising." Asuma doesn't say terrifying or impossible, but the implications are there. "I could understand Sasuke or Naruto – " Sasuke due to trauma and his brother's ministrations, and Naruto because of the Fox. "but Sakura…"

Kakashi nods because he feels the same.

His team… sometimes he's afraid of what they'll grow into.

*I*I*

It does not start during her genin tests, both Iruka-sensei's or Kakashi's, it does not start during the awful mission to Wave, though she is terrified, and it does not start during Orochimaru's attack in the Forest of Death. It is at twelve that she begins a slow sinking, and the beginning ends when she falls in her preliminary match.

(It ends as Inner disappears.)

It is then that she drifts drifts off into the waters, a ghost; the last strings that keep her anchored fray, and she is afraid.

* * *

 _This is the end of the First Act; it chronicles Sakura's first irreparable shattering._

Honestly, this story grew when I really wanted to leave it at the one-shot of the first chapter. I'm still not sure what I think about the subsequent chapters… Would you like me to write more, or should I leave it where it is?

Also should the rating stay as it is?


	7. withered petals

_withered petals_

* * *

 _Sakura moves out of her parents house after the Chuunin Exams. She finds an apartment in a civilian district, on the fringes of Konoha, far away from both the Uchiha Compound and the shinobi apartments where Naruto lives, and never tells anyone of where she sleeps because she exists in the Hokage's office and the hospital more than at home. (Sakura never felt comfortable around shinobi, and yet, she does not belong in a civilian world – she is a paradox, existing in dichotomy; or rather, she does not exist except where she is seen.)_

It is when she leaves that Naruto and Sasuke understand that they do not know their third teammate in any capacity.

(Because Sakura exists in the negative spaces; she was there, an integral part of their team, but that does not become apparent till she vanishes into non-existence and they realize how much they have lost.)

Somehow, due to an administrative error, Haruno Sakura's place of residence is not listed in her file. It is only after a year and a half of looking that Sasuke finds what he sought, and he wonders if perhaps Sakura had guided him, ever so subtly, to her home. (But he does not voice his suspicions, because that would indicate a security breach of massive proportions, and it is _terrifying_ that Haruno Sakura, who had become the Hokage in all but name, who had dealt with and rewritten Konoha's funding and policies and missions and security for _three years_ as the Godaime's proxy, could slip into Konoha at any time.)

When he talks to the owner of the building (who is so _civilian_ that the only shinobi he knows by name is the Hokage), he finds that Sakura had paid rent for the apartment ten years in advance and that the owner doesn't know that she is a shinobi, doesn't know that she defected, and believes that she is on an extended trip.

Sasuke ghosts past him and enters Sakura's apartment.

The air is still, yet not stale, as if the place still breathed in the owner's absence, and withered sakura petals, disturbed by his entrance, sound as shifting papers, of autumn leaves, and Sasuke finds that he cannot move without sound – the dead flowers fill every space. They carpet the ground and pile in the corners; they cover the table with shades of pink, hide the titles of the many books shelved in cherrywood cases, overflow out of the bowls in the pantry, out of the sink, out of the lights on the ceiling. The sweet, faint smell lingers, and Sasuke wonders if Sakura opened her windows and let the petals fall in; if perhaps, she had simply not bothered to sweep them up, let them dry, filling the space with the scent of bitter-sweet and spring and dying things. Sasuke wonder if Sakura had taken the many petals and created _sakurazuke_ , soaking them in salt, releasing their aroma into the air – if she had spread them in her apartment before she left, perhaps in expectation of her visitor, or if they had simply remained in her wake.

He shifts the petals from the bookshelves, and they fall and crumble, compounding the smell that fills the place. The titles are odd: some philosophy, some fiction, a whole series of law books, words circled and notes in small, neat letters. He finds her journals, but they are strangely blank, one or two kanji written on the paper.

 _Shisho drunk again – lung cavity – killing intent – genjutsu and glucocorticoids – Sensei refused treatment, found bleeding out at home –_

He slips the thin volume back on the shelf. It feels as if he were intruding, no matter how sparse and ordinary the writing. Sasuke resists the urge to glance behind him; Sakura has left (deserted), and there is not another soul in the building. (And yet the paranoia knocks politely, years of instinct betray him amongst the faded room, and he begins to turn, but catching himself, he stops, frowning a little; _what is it about Sakura that softens his control?_ )

He opens the door into her bedroom, feels the petals settle at his feet, sweeping across his feet as he pads across the room. The bed is invisible through a haze of pink, and he brushes the petals off to find plain white sheets, reminiscent of the hospital. Here too are the bookshelves; but it is darker here, no windows to let sun in.

He wants to tell her the words she wished to hear, though he himself does not know them. He wants to hold her in his arms, their sun at their side, and watch a flower bloom. He wants to tell her that he is sick of running, that he is sick of the intensity of his desperation, that he simply wants to exist with them, growing broken and patching each other up when the world takes and takes…

It is much too late for regrets, and Sasuke is not Kakashi, does not hold his sorrows and drown himself in facades. Sasuke has been drained by his desperation, simply lingering now. His regrets are paper boats on a still lake, the water seeping into the folds and unraveling the structure, consuming till it sinks into a grave of a million other such boats. His regrets are enough to fill an ocean, but one would have to drown before they saw them all.

He sits on the bed, sakura-petals all around him and wonders of might-have-beens.

Her eyes on the night he had left had been empty, and his departure, perhaps, had begun the slow turns that led up to her fading. She had told him that she would wait, and now he wants to ask her " _why?"_ or " _for what?"_ But he had been empty that day also, and had forgotten the questions that he should have asked. He had left, comforted in an unexplainable way, had walked out of those gates and not looked back.

He wonders if she kept her word.

(He wonders if she is still waiting.)

* * *

 **A/N:** Here is a chapter from about a year after Sakura's defection. I know that it's not from her life as a nuke-non, but I hope that you like it anyway. I wasn't satisfied with the other versions of the continuation of _The Problem of Sakura_ that I'd written, so I thought I'd try something a bit different (honestly, this whole piece is a bit different than how I usually write) and this is the result.


	8. bonds and a twisted tree

_bonds and a twisted tree_

* * *

She is on the rooftop of the hospital and thinks _it is a dreary day._ The sky is sunny, like it had been the day before and before that. Konoha is cursed with perpetually nice, sunny weather. (But Sakura thinks that the sun is blinding and wishes for rain. The light is too penetrative, slipping into the smallest of spaces, and Sakura wants to be unseen – or rather, she wishes to be seen on her own terms.)

She is still numb, and still, nobody has noticed. ( _Why do they contain looks of absolute antipathy? They are a team: she and they. One cannot exist as a third of a whole. She does not understand why they would wish to destroy themselves._ ) She watches as they attempt to kill each other. Sasuke is truly desperate today, and Naruto is confused and as brash as ever. She watches the two balls of energy – _what a terrifying power they contain_ – and wonders what would happen to her if they died then and there….

(She wonders if she would cry as she did on the Bridge. She wonders if she would feel anything, for today feels as if she lived a dream.)

Kakashi materializes beside her, barely sparing her a glance, and jumps up in between the two boys. He is more concerned with the moon and the sun, always more concerned with the natural disasters that are her teammates. She is immovable as she is drenched when the Chidori decimates the water tower and wonders why they care, why they think that this strength is something to boast with, something to attain.

(Because no matter the attack, if you crushed the lungs and the heart, if your hand went straight through a body without resistance, the body would cease to function, lungs stop breathing, heart give a last stutter. And you would be left of a messy aftermath: a destroyed house, perhaps, or a deep fissure in the ground, the blood running sticky-sweet down your hand to your wrist and then your arm, a line of uncomfortably crimson roots. You would be left with blood under your fingernails, with blood in between your fingers, with blood on your face and your clothes –

Then, maybe, you'd scrub, till only a hint of brown tinged your fingertips.

Then, maybe, you'd burn your clothes, staring at the flames licking the blood that once again glows crimson.

Then, maybe, the memory would forever be in the corners of your mind, growing, a weed that was never eradicated, till its thorns made you scream and scream and _scream–_ )

No. Sakura thinks that perhaps they do not understand.

When Kakashi's hand went straight through Haku's chest, perhaps she was the only one looking.

Naruto saw the aftermath, concentrated on Zabuza, but Sakura couldn't wrench her eyes from Haku. And she saw the horrific remains of the boy's body, looked and glanced inadvertently at Sasuke, and ghost of a thought passed through her mind that she would much rather kill cleanly, kill without a mark, than to be left with the husk of a person, so mangled and destroyed that the chest no longer existed, giving way to a red stain on the bridge.

She thinks that she would rather believe that they were sleeping, rather a kill with the gentlest of touches. For her own peace of mind (she is selfish, _remember_ ).

She watches Kakashi, his face grim and unforgiving, watches as the boys storm off, hearts beating too much blood into their veins.

(They, the three broken students of the broken teacher, have a bond that goes deeper than blood spilled together, a bond that grows twisted and bent, but much too quickly all the same. They cannot be apathetic towards each other, no matter Sakura's exterior, no matter Sasuke's madness and hatred, no matter Naruto's pariahdom and the villager's hatred for one, adoration for another, and a complete dismissal of the last. Their bonds tie them because they cling to each other, push each other away, because they have no one else, because they are all alone. Because they feel with an intensity of touch on lacerated skin when with each other.)

(Sakura feels a hollowness when she sees them leaving, when she continues to see them leave – who does she have left? Her parents? She herself had told them when she made genin that she was an adult. That she didn't need them. They hadn't protested. They see each other, but there are no more words, and Sakura wonders when they had grown so apart. In her fanaticism, she lost Ino, and lost her again in the preliminaries. She doesn't remember what had happened after the shintenshin and is no longer certain that she wants to remember. Sakura is alone; Sakura clings to her team.)

(But she is forever forgotten, forever forsaken and left in the village as her two rash teammates leave again and again and _again._ )

Only she remains, left on the flooded rooftop, the sunlight glaring off the surface of the waters, burning too brightly.

* * *

 _When is the sakura remembered but in spring?_

For some reason, I'm not satisfied with this chapter. I've rewritten it about ten times, and stopped there, lest I go mad, but I didn't find the tone that I truly wanted. You tell me, did I manage to continue the continuity of the previous chapters?


	9. not enough

_not enough_

* * *

Sakura notices the details: the trees just beginning to tinge a burnt orange, the wind brushing through the strands of her now short hair, the footsteps of a boy who isn't quite skilled enough yet. But the day is over. It is twilight, and she sees more shadows than their casters.

Sasuke is leaving; she knows that he thinks that it is forever, but that is a lie, for where will he turn after his vengeance leaves him hollow?

(He will turn to red lines and crimson blood, to danger and epinephrine; he will seek to forget and when he cannot, he will come home, because Naruto will not let him become a coward, will not let him fall upon his own sword…)

She steps from the shadows, every footstep controlled and careful, and faces him.

(She has found her courage, but it cannot be called courage – it is an odd mix of apathy and desperation. Sakura knows that she is breaking, but does not know how, does not know why. The remnants of Team Seven exist in non-existent memories; were they only together for months? It is as if an eternity in a moment has passed by, leaving her disoriented and clinging to red threads of fate that only fray under her touch.)

"Naruto will be devastated." Her voice is calm, even, the hint of apathy still there. (But she is lonely, but she desires something _more_ of the boy in front of her; but he cannot give what she wishes. He himself is grasping for something that no one can provide.)

Sasuke smirks. (But it is a desperate thing, for Sasuke has always been desperate. It is why he leaves.)

"You won't be?"

"I will wait." But for what, she does not stay, and maybe Sasuke does, in a way, understand.

"You won't stop me?"

"No." _I have never been the one you stayed for, my team will forever be broken and broken again._

Sakura has been left so many times, and yet she still feels that dull ache the same place where Kakashi's Chidori had run Haku through. She wonders if she will always feel this way, her heart thawed and vulnerable to those who will only be oblivious, or if, after so many blows, the rush of blood will stay and the heart freeze. She wonders if the sakura is only meant to be appreciated in full bloom (and she has not bloomed yet) and then forgotten, eyes sliding over background, after those few days.

Sasuke looks at her with her own eyes, because underneath the Avenger is a little boy who yet refuses to let go to the fundamental truths in his life. Because underneath the Avenger, he knows that once he ends his revenge he will have nothing to live for, that the day the ends his brother's life, he will consider his own death. Because though he (loves) his team, they are not enough for the hundreds that were taken.

She is not enough.

(Naruto, _Konoha_ , is not enough)

 _(She wonders if it is enough for her.)_

*I*I*

She pauses at the hospital door.

It is now morning, the sun is pressing down on the village, the sun and the clear sky. It is another perfect day, and somehow, Sakura thinks that it is fitting; the first desertion, the first time Naruto has failed, and the sun still shines. (It is much more fitting than the rain of the memorial, when Naruto wept, and Sasuke was too solemn. Then it was almost a mockery, a cliche, belying the terrible reality – even the sky wept, as if Konoha was the world, and everything must yield before its sorrow, as if it were a simple _story_.)

Sakura opens the door with the same deliberateness that she had held (a terrible vulnerability) when she faced Sasuke.

"Sakura-chan."

His voice is low, guilt-filled and full of self-loathing, and Sakura wonders _why_? Hadn't it been clear that Sasuke was always restless, always striving for something much more concrete than either of their dreams? (Hadn't it been clear, the hollow of a hundred and more souls that haunted the edges of his eyes? Hadn't it been clear, the empty Compound and Sasuke's terrible loneliness? Hadn't it been clear that they were _not enough?_ )

"Naruto. I heard that you were unconscious and in intensive care. I'm glad you're alive." And it's true. She is not sure what she would do if he died, because he is her sun, and before she lost her moon and stars, she hadn't realized how much she relied on his light.

"He left." The voice is anguished.

"I know."

"I'll _bring him back_ , I promise." Because Naruto has never asked anything of anyone save for himself, and then he pushes to the breaking point, further into a cruel desert of self-recrimination.

It is then that Sakura realizes that perhaps Naruto relies on their team even more than she. Because she can ( _cannot_ ) survive without them, but Naruto relies on the people he holds dear and will not let go. For Sakura, it is enough that they are alive, but Naruto needs them _beside_ him.

"He made his choice."

Naruto looks at Sakura, disbelieving, and she suddenly sees how their team dynamic will always be. Naruto will ever run between the Sasuke who left and the Sakura who would let him go.

(Naruto needs to believe that they can bring Sasuke back, needs to believe that he is _enough_.)

(Perhaps he will be, someday.)

( _She wonders when her sun stopped being enough_.)

"They _took_ him. He _will come back._ "

Naruto is fierce: ever brave, ever believing. (He too is desperate. It is why he stays.) And Sakura knows that she cannot dissuade him, as she knew that Sasuke would leave.

 _(She knows that she alone will never be enough.)_

Naruto leaves once he returns to health, and this time Sakura watches him as he never turns back.

(And always, it is a twilight that has cast itself over her. The shadows curl into her own and darken the pool of spilled ink at her feet. The Nara would not touch her, she believes, for the shadows themselves are an abyss of want.)

 _(What does it mean to be enough?)_

* * *

Would you like me to write more chapters after Sakura becomes nukenin or just jump around as I have been doing?


	10. introductions

_introductions_

* * *

 _Hello, my name is Haruno Sakura. My likes are few and in between, and I have little that I truly hate. My dreams? (a wry smile) I don't have any at the present, and I doubt that will change; dreams are for those with surety, and my surety has long since shattered. I do have a tenant that I live by: that truth must be founded on evidence, and that I must not trust even myself. I am lost right now, but I do not think it matters…_

He keeps an eye on her.

She doesn't look ragged as others do, as dirty from traveling, but her vivid eyes contain the same weariness that lurks in the silent corners of all those who have no belonging.

When the rumor had started that Haruno Sakura of Konohagakure had defected, he had not believed them.

" _Of Team Seven?"_

" _Yes."_

" _That's impossible. She's the Godaime's apprentice and assistant; why would she defect?"_

" _Like teacher, like student, I suppose."_

" _Senju at least had a reason – Haruno? She's had no true tragedies; her teammates are still alive, she doesn't seem to have a husband or a romantic interest, her sensei still goes on missions with her… she's respected, admired,_ valued _."_

" _She must have her reasons."_

There are reasons; she has not snapped yet and is sitting two meters away from him, sake in hand and languid in all the grace of a shinobi with too much to ponder and too little to drink. She is too _rational_ to not have reasons… so there must be reasons, yet he does not care to ask, does not care to be curious. It will be a repetition, the same epiphany year after year (and isn't he a hypocrite? doesn't he have the same reasons?) and so he leaves the bar, walking out into a dusky, night-riddled evening, patches of a void seeping through…

Yet he meets her again, a few weeks from the first time he saw the bright pink hair. (He knows not to trust the innocence of the color – Haruno Sakura is known as sapphire, the clear raw mineral, unrefined and yet more true than others. She is cold, ruthless, but it is not in her stance, nor in her manner – only in her results is this truth made a clarity.)

(He remembers once, when he saw an aftermath of her work. The body had been restored, perfect – still clothed in the blood soaked garments. It had been laid out on the bed, hands folded over the stomach, eyes closed and a slight smile on the face. Haruno Sakura is perhaps the only shinobi to have created a technique that uses the dying chakra of a person to restore the body to its prime state; she is perhaps the only shinobi that wastes time on the appearance of the dead. Her work drains all of the person's original chakra and repels all foreign chakra, leaving it in non-existence, in a vacuum. It is unnatural, and you can feel the screech of blade on bone as you draw closer to the _truly_ lifeless doll.)

She is younger than he expected, and he is not sure why.

He had known her age, read her Bingo Book entry and memorized it once he had encountered her in a bar at the depths of the world – that is, Ame, after its complete and utter ruin. Their God and Angel were rumored to have fallen there, in the city of _Ochiru Namida_. The sky mourns, and it is perpetually weeping over that place.

(Only nukenin stay in the damned city, and even then, never for longer than a week.

Haruno Sakura stays there for a month.

She tells him this later, when he is ready to die and she simply looks at him with completely empty eyes.)

But Haruno is _young_. Her body is not yet fully developed, and her age clings to her movements as she pretends to be an eternity. It was that moment of surprise that changed so many things, and yet left fate to its own spider silk, undisturbed.

They face each other (he will soon forget the whys and hows of that second meeting, for they are trivial and best left forgotten), and he wonders all the reasons of a departure he does not wish to know.

He scans her, as he scans enemies, looking for weaknesses, recalling strengths, trying to glimpse the antagonism before an attack.

He finds none.

She looks whimsical, almost half there, and he wonders if it hasn't truly sunk in that she has defected. As if she is not a shinobi at all, but merely a poet or an artist. He wonders if it was planned, her defection. He wonders… but he will never ask, and she will never offer. Reasons are incredibly private in the shinobi world. It is perhaps the only thing that _can_ remain private. Others will assume, but there is no certainty without an affirmation from the person in question.

As a nukenin, your thoughts are your own, not your village's, and many hoard this small bit of freedom with all the fierceness of a dragon with its gold.

"Hello."

He starts, warier now than he was before, for what shinobi simply begins a conversation in the middle of the half destroyed forest (some of the chaos and fallen trees clearly _her_ fault)?

"Akamine Rei…" and then she proceeds to recite his Bingo Book entry back at him, words for word.

There is a period of quiet, and he will swear later that it lasted hours.

(And he wonders at the fae, the spirit, that stands before him. For there is something unearthly [something unhinged] about the way she moves, the way she talks, her expressions through the familiar haze of emptiness that characterize their kind of brokenness. He wonders if she _had_ snapped, that perhaps her sanity is only a thin facade…)

"Would you like to get sake?"

"What?"

There is no rhyme or reason to that question, but somehow, it fits her. Unreality is sinking in for Akamine Rei and he will be the first ensnared in Haruno Sakura's peculiar kind of lethalness.

"One cannot drink alone without the conditions for an unhealthy amount of contemplation hanging over their head. You are convenient."

Somehow, he agrees. Somehow, he finds himself in a bar with a pastel ghost, in a rare companionship that should not exist between strangers with the power to destroy a small village.

(He will tire in the end, and she will move on, ever searching for a fitting conclusion.)


	11. gut feeling

_gut feeling_

* * *

When Sakura did not return the deadline of the mission, Hatake Kakashi knew.

Knew with the same wrenching feeling that he'd had when he realized that Rin had been captured; knew with the same certainty of Sasuke's defection after the Chuunin Exams; knew with a weary heartbreak and an expectation of guilt.

(He knows her, Sakura, and yet not at all. She is perhaps the most like him – without comprehension, others will ever compare him to the Avenger, but Sasuke has ever been more Obito than Kakashi. You can tell the crux of a being by how they break, and Sasuke held too much love for it not to turn to purpose. [Obito had gone after Rin, remember? He had become single-minded, acting decisively, purposefully, _pragmatically ruthless_ for once, in order to get to Rin. There had been no hesitation in his strikes when he had hesitated before.] No. Sasuke has too passion to ever be like him [and he is glad, for he is a wretched man]. It is Sakura who keeps her emotions in, no matter his first impression of her as a airheaded fangirl. It is Sakura, who has had, ironically, no shinobi influence before the Academy, that watches as her teammate leave again and again, who buries herself into her work and going on dangerous missions. Except Sakura had not been dosed with the drug called patriotism and duty from the day she was born – unlike Naruto, who knew the Third as Jiji, or Sasuke, who was expected to be an exemplary shinobi for both the village and his clan. Even he, the prodigy, had know that he could not abandon Konoha, that he was shackled to the place… Sasuke has left, blinded by hurt and a desire for revenge [for answers], but Sakura had left logically, rationally, and this is what makes them different.)

(With Sasuke, Naruto is right to believe that he may still return. With Sakura… Kakashi feels a deep hopelessness seeping into his bones.)

He does not go to the Hokage – for what is a feeling without proof? Sakura is not terribly late yet, and there are many things that may go wrong on a mission.

He quietly takes on an S-rank mission, drowning in crimson and adrenaline.

Days pass, and then it is Shizune who officially declares Haruno Sakura nukenin. It is rumored that the Hokage ignores and denies all mentions of her former apprentice. Konoha is too shocked to turn derisive; Haruno Sakura had been a public figure, as the Hokage's aide, she'd been on the mission office more than Tsunade, she'd treated almost all the jonin and ANBU for their grevious wounds…

There was no reason to her defection.

Perhaps she had been too young, some said. Too naïve.

But those who had known her, had seen her in the Council, in the Mission Office, in the hospital, knew that Sakura had been eerily competent, that she would not have simply broken (like her sensei – though Kakashi had shattered a thousand times, simply picking up the pieces, uncaring that some were ground to dust so fine that there was no chance of repair).

(Ino was silent – since the preliminaries, she had not spoken to Sakura, instead choosing to disappear into the darkness of T&I. Like Kakashi, she had known, and she was not surprised. Unlike Kakashi, she was relieved.)

Konoha is overfull of speculation.

None of them are correct.

(Sakura had simply left, and to try to understand the reasons behind the abrupt departure, one must understand Sakura in both her history as shinobi and as civilian and how those around her have always perceived her.)


	12. hollow perfection

_hollow perfection_

* * *

 _She leaves as pastel petals are crushed underfoot and the sakura blooms, before hazakura. It wasn't planned, wasn't expected; Sakura has never been a creature of spontaneity, but somehow, as the trees became bare once again, she found herself an inescapable distance from [her] village._

 _She draws a careful line through her headband, an act that makes permanent her refusal of the celestial beings and their loves…_

It starts with her first murder, as Kakashi holds her, and she retches, trying to erase the taste of guilt and horror from her stomach. Sensei can be oddly caring, in his own way, and Sakura is grateful—

(She glances again to the torn skin, the earthquake that she herself made in the body, glances again at the human that does not seem human, glances again, stumbling towards it and trying to fix what she had undone, trying to push the rent back together… Kakashi pulls her away from the body, holds her in an iron grip to his chest as she struggles. _[Kakashi has ever been stronger, ever been faster than she will ever be… ]_

She screams silently, voice too hoarse to be louder than a whimper, falling, because she can see the Kiri-nin in the face of the unknown body in front of her; she thinks of a heart of soft ice and warmth, the dichotomy that could not exist and therefore must be wiped out with extreme punity. Because her inexperienced cuts rend flesh, and the mangled red reminds her of the Bridge and _that body_ …)

—this is the image that begins what they call her madness.

(And it has always been rows and rows of perfect bodies, juxtaposed crimson coverings on unbroken porcelain. Those who watch either run or go as mad as she; voids have ever sought to expand before collapsing in on themselves. She had not broken yet, or perhaps was always so, and therefore mends to keep her peace of thought.)

(Kakashi is the only one who stays by her side through her reconstructions, through the victim's seizures as chakra forces the last lifeforce to create a dead perfection… he watches as witness to her own desperation and does not judge.)

Sakura has ever been the scholar, more than the traitor who sought immortality through knowledge, more than the Third, who was called _kami_ , more than any shinobi had a right to be (because Haruno Sakura has never felt comfortable in her chosen career; because Haruno Sakura buried a civilian when she took up a piece of metal that forever shackled her _._ ) So she studies the human body, working from the outside then deeper, and in time she refines a technique designed to emulate perfection.

They call it unnatural, call her insane (quietly, never in front of her) for even they can feel the dissonance of the two-point-seven-one-eight centimeters of space between her and both worlds, because she could not carve out a place for herself, and so she creates a space outside, and it is as if one were looking through a ruined glass.

They treat her as another oddity, a jonin, and doesn't everyone know that jonin are insane? But those closer know that she is much too rational to ever be mad; perhaps then it is a logical irrationality. She has always been too self-aware…

(And in the end there were rows and rows of perfectly manufactured dolls, assembly lines completely silent in their deadly work. There were vivid green eyes haunting the hollowed out bodies arrayed in crimson petals; delicate, calloused hands that did both the devil's and the angel's work. There was a finality, and so she forever chases a closure that eludes her.)

* * *

 **A/N:** I have been feeling under the weather (which is unfortunately rainy), and so have not been able to muster up much energy. Every word felt like it was wrenched away in a brutal game of tug-o-war... so I can't guarantee any sort of quality for today or the next few weeks. Sorry, dear readers.


	13. named

_named_

* * *

Sasuke hears about her through Kabuto.

It's an offhand comment, seemingly flippant, but Kabuto has noticed by now (because Kabuto dwells in corners, unnoticed, quiet, observing) that Sasuke does not speak of his teammates, that Sasuke still is tied by that red thread and that it sometimes cuts off circulation, that sometimes he struggles to breathe…

"Haruno Sakura has been Named."

(And his inhale catches on the bare branches stained red, because _Sakura_ , Sakura haunts the grey inbetweens that lingers above his darker desperations, and he is always peripherally aware of the ripples from her words in that penultimate moment—because Naming is huge, Naming means that the shinobi has been recognized as the worst type of threat, because Sakura would never have chased after fame _[he knows her]_ and Sasuke is _afraid_ [afraid that Kabuto has noticed her, afraid that _Orochimaru_ might notice her]. He feels, in a moment of dissonance to a changing world _where he himself is static_ , a surge of undefinable emotion that passes and drains him.)

And in this space he must act.

"Haruno?" he replies, voice a monotone incredulous. "That's absurd."

It is absurd. Sakura prefers to stay silent, prefers to be an invisible. (In those days after the Exams, she had changed; still ever a broken piece that fit perfectly into a dysfunctional melody, she had faded, become more of the white canvas than the garishly pink paint. He wonders if he had stayed, would they have been enough? Would they have grown to be enough?)

Kabuto's eyes are sharp and do not compromise in the one loyalty that all shinobi share: that is, to paranoia.

"She seems to be progressing at a _prodigious_ rate."

His word choice—and Sasuke feels his anger flare, because this is clearly an attempt to unsettle him, to make him furious, to feed his fear that he will never be as good as _that man_.

(Perhaps if it were Naruto, he would have feel that same fear Kabuto goads him towards; perhaps if it were Kiba or Shikamaru or any of his former classmates. But Sakura? _I will wait_ , and perhaps it was her eyes and how they'd changed from spring leaves to river stones, only barely visible through the rushing waters… perhaps it was that she'd let him go, that she had understood. _I will wait_ , and that was a promise, but Sasuke does not know anymore the question that prompted it.)

"Hn." He turns away. The conversation has closed, and Kabuto is silent.

Later, he finds a small black book in his room and flips to a picture of a pink-haired shinobi (ever serious, her lips set in harsh lines).

 _Fleeting Life_

It is oddly apt.

* * *

 **A/N:** This might be the shortest chapter I have _ever_ written, and I am so, so sorry. I haven't had much time to write lately, and the more concrete world has been slamming down walls of responsibilities around me. I had a bit of a nervous breakdown in the morning that had to do with the sheer ocean of _work_ that I had in front of me—and then I threw of my hands and gave up on it, so am currently feeling a tad bit guilty...


	14. hold me suffocating

_hold me suffocating_

* * *

And she gasps, because sometimes she drowns—because she is not sane—there is only a thin veneer of ice above tumultuous waters, giving appearances of stillness.

He smiles, and it is brilliant and dangerous, and she falls, because how can she live without the constant adrenaline tracing her veins, her every breath? His fingers crackle with lightning, scar her skin, leave permanent caresses and she breathes into him, breaths falling into synchronization as she vies against him, as she creates art with thin crimson lines, and she has caught the vestiges of his attention.

They exist in an intensity that can only come for short bursts (she still turns at times, expecting her sun, her stars to guard her back) and perhaps that is why she leaves (she is not comfortable with living—her branches are bare, and so she remains the skeleton, falling, uncaring of the knowledge that she will lie broken when gravity asserts itself, claiming her body).

He does not ask of her what she cannot give, and they are never closer than when they cut each other with the same carelessness with which they have run.

(It is Akamine Rei that introduces Xi to her, and they mold into each other, broken pieces fitting together in disharmony—Rei simply stares [and even then his eyes are slightly glazed, too far from the too real concrete of a shinobi's existence] because he knew that they are more kin than blood, that they will share blood, but never their own.)

He smiled a sharp edge, and she drank burning poison, keeping steady eyes on him.

(Uchiha Sasuke absorbs the words: _Haruno Sakura has found a partner_ , and closes his eyes. He wonders—but then, it does not matter anymore. There is an emptiness in his chest that has never filled, but he has learned to live since the day it was carved out by spinning, spinning eyes, learned to survive, fire filling veins—learned to subsist on scorching rather than warmth.)

Xi has an artist's hands, delicate fingers that are so out of place in their profession. They are hidden by dark grey, but he uncovers them to touch her, playing a melody that perhaps only she can understand, a haunting tune—notes that only speak of a hardness; softness has been brushed over by the continual reapplication of blood. Neither she nor her partner knows how to be gentle anymore—their bodies are ebony, carved to move but never to change (paranoia is ingrained into the iron of their blood). They are the same, too marble, to mold perfectly into each other, to trust fully.

"So you are the Flower that they say has been drenched in blood."

Green eyes, and they have only become more piercing and apathetic.

He is too much of a shinobi, and she will always be a part of a murdered civilian—a part of her that died when she accepted the metal headpiece they told her never to take off ( _this is your allegiance, this is your lifeblood—there is no need to live if you have faith_ ). Her other half, the half of her that was ever too bright, was shattered that day she lost her concretes. Still. They fit too well and are disconcerted by the seamless edges between them.

So they drift.

(It is unnatural for a flower to last longer than a few days. So will she always leave.)

"Yes."

He is still adorned in blood and high off of the kill. He plays a risk because they now live to fill emptiness, and so he courts her in the land at the edge of the world, in a broken, ruined place, where a God and Angel fell.

The taste of her blood is an addiction, and as she chases after an undefined wish (it is so very painful—it is tearing her apart, though she does not know what it is), he defines his own goals and chases her with a single minded intensity. (But when has intensity ever lasted?)

The back of his hand brushes her cheek, and she leans, ever minutely, towards him. Both their eyes are open, still observing, a habit that not even this intensity will shake.

"Dance with me."

"For awhile, perhaps."

(It is enough.)

( _She wonders if it will ever be enough._ )

He is an artist, and true art exists in a split-second, only preserved in remembrance.

She does not know why she said no, or even if she had entirely done so. It was never realized, never progressing beyond a light graphite sketch. They had simply drifted—a brief moment of blinding light (but never so bright that to dissolve marble, just to let it glow.)

He was the artist, and she danced on the fringes of reality.

He courted her, but never with intentions of eternity.

(He admires the blossoms, overwhelming as they cover visibility—he lets himself be blinded and then simply continues when he can see once again, when withered petals sink to bottom of lakes.)


	15. alike

_alike_

* * *

Sakura meets Sasori with all the subtle brutality of an assassin.

(It is not Shishio's overwhelming strength, which disposes of the need for subtlety through explosive force; Sakura has never been a frontline fighter—never a medic either—she seems only to exist in shadows of those brighter than her.)

She does not face him straight on; Sakura is not a fool, she knows that one touch of the poisoned blades will lead to her death, not from the poison itself, but from distraction (and distraction is fatal in her profession) so she melts into shadows, weaving a reluctant cloak around herself, till only an imprint from her vivid green eyes is left.

(Sasori smiles, because he too has been waiting for this confrontation. They are not much different, the one they call transience and the puppeteer, they both preserve an infinity sealed with death's kiss.)

(His partner had shuddered when she was Named, telling him that he hoped that they never met—yet they were there, locked in this deadly game of cat and mouse. Sasori feels his chakra vibrate in anticipation.)

"I admire you."

It is stated, bare, a stark confession of fact. Sasori smiles oddly—a wry, ironic thing, as if they are sharing a joke, and Sakura somehow cannot bring herself to feel disgust at his familiarity. He is the enemy, but that does not mean anything to her, and slowly, she can see the bonds tying her slipping.

"You create eternity with your art. Perfect dolls, perfect bodies— _ethereal—_ not of this world…"

And suddenly Sakura feels irrationally angry. It is not _art_ , what she does, it is not some _sick, depraved creation_ like Sasori's human puppets; no, what she does is simply _coping_ , in the only way she knows how—it is her _peace_ — _how dare he defile that with his honey-poison words—_

(But that is not true either—she cannot explain what her defiance of death truly is, what it _means_ to her…)

She is moving, chakra flung out in suffocating killing intent; silent, though she wants to _scream_ , because she knows better than that (shinobi play from shadows) and so she presses her hands together in two seals and mist fills the cave, moisture from the air condensing, saturated with her chakra. (She remembers, with a clarity born out of fear, Wave and the missing-nin who still haunts her dreams) She _feels_ the extended strings Sasori has, his chakra controlling the puppets, and speeds silently through the mist, closer and closer to her target—the diffusive chakra signature permeates every unoccupied space, and with her chakra suppressed to the same level as the mist around her, she becomes a ghost.

(There is something wrong with the picture of Sasori—he should have aged but his body has not… he called them similar, but she preserves the _dead_ , and Sakura feels a dawning dread when she thinks how far he might have gone to create an eternity.)

But then she feels a spike of chakra down one of the tenuous strings that connect Sasori—or his visage—to his puppets, and then there is poison in the air, mingling with her chakra; she dodges around a web of chakra strings and curses in her mind as she flips over a knife, holding her breath till she can get somewhere safer to administer the antidote—

He will not give her the space she needs, and Sakura feels grimness settling into her bones as she realizes she is likely to die here, in this cave of a poison that she _can_ cure. She finds that the prospect is almost frightening. (Still, her mind does not stop watching for an opportunity.)

So she opens her mouth, some part of her refusing to die silent. (It is an idiotic move, she knows. She's a shinobi, meant to work and die in silence, quiet loyalty in every movement. But she has never been truly a shinobi, never fully comfortable in the killer's skin that clothes her.)

"You are _wrong_ , Sasori-san."

As soon as she opens her mouth, a new batch of knives thud into the wall behind her, and she smiles a bit hysterically. (Flashback: remember the time when she trained suicidally, when she had been the only one left? remember the time when she trained underwater, chakra accentuating every movement, attempting to last in a world without air? remember when she almost stopped trying, when she wondered what it would be like to drown?)

"You admire me because you believe mistakenly that I am like you. But we could not be further from each other if I tried. You, Sasori of the Red Sands, make an artificial eternity, preserve utility. I, however, put to rest those that have met death."

She keeps moving. (She is reaching her limit.)

Sasori scoffs, "Idealistic fool."

"Better than trying to grasp a finite being and force it to be your tool. You disgust me."

She does not contradict his statement. It is true in some ways; she was always too soft and too hard for the bloody life of shinobi. In some ways they are both idealistic fools tempered by the horrors they make.

"Who was your first loss, Sasori-san? Which of the dead did you try to keep forever?"

He does not answer, but Sakura takes the minute almost-hesitation to jump upside down on the ceiling of the cave. Shishou would have punched it, breaking through to sunlight. Sakura does not (she is not her brash, emotion-filled teacher). Instead her chakra expands rapidly, following faults in the rock and filling them. Her affinity is earth, and while she never learned more than the basic Doton jutsu, she is familiar enough with her element that she can interact with it with little to no problem. She stands her ground on the ceiling, deflecting kunai and shuriken while she continues to work her chakra into the rock. Sasori's puppet is not meant for battle in the air, and Sakura finds it easier to dodge as she plans.

(Most shinobi never go this far with tree-walking; they do not know how to regulate their blood with chakra in order to keep stable and prevent dizziness when upside down. Natural instinct keeps them on the ground when they would be better served upside down or sideways.)

Then she is ready, and her chakra surges, eating up more than half of her reserves. The faults expand and the rock collapses. Several tons of earth bury the inside of the cave as her actions cause a sinkhole. Sakura desperately uses the Headhunter Jutsu to emerge on the surface.

She staggers back to solid ground, and falls to the ground. Her shoulder is dislocated and she has scrapes throughout her body. Wincing, she reaches inside her vest and takes out the syringe that contains the antidote. She stabs it into her arm and grits her teeth at the pain that soon follows the action.

Then chakra exhaustion drags her into unconsciousness.

* * *

 _Point of divergence: Kankuro is cured, but Sakura cannot repair the damage that the poison has already wrecked on his body. Chiyo stays behind—she knows better the effects of poison and still sees the White Fang in Kakashi. (She believes that they will fail.) While Temari offers to accompany them, Kakashi reminds her that she is now the leader of Sunagakure. The last Sand Sibling left standing; she has a responsibility to stay in the village, to lead her people. Because Sakura does not bother healing the extensive damage that Sasori's poison has wrought, the Konoha team leaves earlier. Chiyo, seeing the distraught Temari, promises to go after the team as soon as Kankuro is healed to the best of her ability. Sakura helps Kakashi defeat Itachi and breaks Naruto out of the genjutsu. She crumbles the rock separating them only to watch the end of the extraction, and Gaara fall. Naruto's anguish triggers the Nine-Tails and without thinking he chases after Deidara. Kakashi runs after him, calling to Sakura to keep Sasori busy, that there is backup on the way. After both their respective fights, Chiyo arrives and gives her life for Gaara, and Sakura watches with an inscrutable expression._


End file.
